Arch stable ? I mean, from experience, I’ve had one break in stability so bad it made me hop : the lack of gentoo-like config protect. To be fair, I was on Artix but the breakage was versions of Pipewire deleting not just my changed config files but config files it couldn’t run without ! Or to be fair, also, actual Arch but on my phone, plasma 5 package conflicts (that came as is from the installation image) prevent the whole system from updating 🙃 … Never had any of those 2 problems on OpenSUSE or, to be fair, non-Arch-based distros
Somebody has never used opensuse. Zypper is an amazing package manager, one of the best on any distro.
It can handle flatpacks, native packages, and packages from the opensuse build system, keeping everything updated and organized.
Pacman is very basic by comparison, and a lot slower too in my experience.
Wait something can be slower than Zypper? Does it have a bunch of
sleep(1)scattered around?I guess I’m smart enough to install opensuse, but dumb enough that I somehow got slow pacman.
I kid you not, on my hardware zypper is the fastest between ubuntu apt, fedora dnf, and arch pacman. dnf was the second-fastest on my hardware, with apt and pacman being pretty sluggish
I’ve also used portage which was even slower, but probably not a fair comparison considering how much more complex it is.
‘On my machine it works’ is not a strong argument, and is highly unlikely, due to the language it was written in.
Pacman is written in C, APT in C++, DNF in Python, and Zypper in C++ as well.
So, no. Pacman ‘wins’.
What truly matters is which tool is best suited for your use case.
In the grand scheme of things the difference between C, C++, and Python isn’t meaningful when operating over a network (edit: for a single-user system). It’s very likely that the difference for thread OP is just caused by weaker connections to specific repos.
We’re talking about a package manager, not a game, network server, etc. On a basic level the package manager only needs to download files from a network and install them (OS syscalls for reading/writing files, these are exposed C functions or assembly routines), or delegate to a specific package’s build setup (which will also likely be written in a compiled language)
Trust me my friend, a person can make a c program that’s much, much slower than one in python. That’s a meaningless point.
Sure, c allows for more control and thus the possibility for a quicker program but that’s just it, a possibility.
Zipper, though written in c++, can only download one thing at a time. This is why it’s so slow
Wait, zypper can handle flatpaks? How?
I would also like to know
Sorry. I didn’t even read it. I just down voted when I saw that terrible human being.
OpenSUSE was actually released long before Arch even existed. I’m an Arch user, btw, but I consider both operating systems to be excellent choices. Everyone has their own preferences. Let people enjoy what they like and embrace their individuality. We don’t all have to be alike…
OpenSUSE was actually released long before Arch even existed.
You’re basically right but just some historic facts added :
Judd Vinet started the Arch Linux project in March 2002. OpenSUSE : Its development was opened up to the community in 2005, which marked the creation of openSUSE. Before that it was called SUSE Linux, first released in 1994.
OpenSUSE exists as a testbed for SLE, I don’t think there’s anything confusing about that. It’s also much easier to get to a sensible setup for new users. If it weren’t for the AUR and the Arch Wiki, I would probably still be using it.
Coming from someone who’s clearly never used Arch… It is anything but stable, that’s kinda the whole point.
Asshole meme template + really biased take. You really wanted to be downvoted aren’t you ?
Arch based distros are pretty stable in my experience. I actually had much more problems on distros like Debian and PopOs than Arch.
Yeah, I hate it when I update Debian and it fails to boot. Oh wait…
Problems I had were because of software not being on the latest version, not updates. Things just work on Arch for me. Only thing that ever broke was Xorg because of Nvidia drivers but that’s pretty easy fix.
You’ve been lucky. I’ve been daily driving EndeavourOS for a few months now and I really love it but it did spontaneously break spectacularly twice already due to updates.
Problems I had were because of software not being on the latest version
I really need to get someone to make a jingle for this: just use flatpak/appimage/distrobox/nix…
Things just work on Arch for me.
And how long have you been using that install? I ran arch and derivatives for 2+ years on multiple devices and can’t count how many times they failed to boot due to an update.
MX + nix unstable give me the same bleeding edge packages without risking my system exploding randomly, while also giving me a bunch of other benefits.
Serious question: What makes Arch’s package manager so “great”? I always just found it confusing to use. The flags don’t make any sense to me. It feels like you have to add a varying number of s to get it to do what you want. I never found it to be any faster or slower than any of the others (apart from portage of course) out there. And apart from the flags it doesn’t seem to give me any more or less trouble than the others.
pacman -Snstall -yefresh -yefresh -unly-upgrades
User is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
LOL, me using Debian for the first time.
sudo is not installed. Check apt search sudo for possible sources.
I figured that out after a quick search. Thanks though. I just thought it was kind of funny how I found out Debian doesn’t come with sudo.
Dunno. Anecdotal, a few years ago pacman appeared to be much faster than apt-get for me. Currently I don’t see that very much difference but then again I haven’t paid much attention to it.
- Pacman can do parallel downloads (which I haven’t tried) : https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman#Enabling_parallel_downloads
there’s nala as an upgrade to apt, but pacman iirc has a few more features still
As a user it’s definitely harder to get into than apt or dnf. However, as a packager, it’s very easy to package new applications for pacman. That’s also why the AUR offers this many packages often not found in other distros.
It’s fast. That’s why it’s great. I’ve considered switching to opensuse a lot, but the speed of pacman compared to how slow zypper is always drags me back to arch
Wow I must be doing something wrong, zypper has always been faster for me than pacman, both on my newer desktop and my older laptop
I use tumbleweed on my desktop, but run arch on a secondary machine. From experience, pacman is much faster than zypper, even on a slower machine.
Have you ever even used opensuse?
Bold :-) openSUSE is based on zypper and rpm. Arch Linux uses its own package system.
p.s. Please replace that Change my mind guy with a Calvin and Hobbes one.
Maybe they used him because it’s a shit opinion?
I have no horse in the Linux distro race, I’m just downvoting this inferior version of the meme format because fuck that guy.
You can down vote on lemmy?
At least in the Voyager app. I have heard it’s not the same thing as elsewhere but I haven’t taken the time to understand how or why it’s different.
I use the Voyager web app via lemmy.world and it does not.
🤷
Maybe the Lemmy instance I use blocks down votes?
mine for sure.
That sounds reasonable to me! Would explain why the mobile app has it and the web app doesn’t; I don’t know if a Lemmy instance has a way to advertise the functions it supports to third party apps.
I think blocking downvotes is an option built into Lemmy servers that can be communicated through the API. I know there are a decent amount of instances that don’t federate downvotes because of toxicity concerns.
For me, the Boost Lemmy app let me downvote even though my instance has it disabled… It just quietly failed and when I go back the downvote isn’t there.
The Jerboa and Voyager apps, on the other hand, don’t: Voyager let’s you try but correctly shows an error, while Jerboa flat out doesn’t offer it since I can’t anyway
I also like this setting for displaying separate up and down votes
I can downvote on kbin. I haven’t find a nice, beautiful and simple app for it like Thunder for Lemmy, though.
lemmy.one has disabled downvotes, it’s up to admins of each instance if they allow viewing and making downvotes.
Arch has no reason to exist as almost all of it’s benefits are replicated with nix without having your system fail to boot because you dared to update it.
The gamble is the fun part tho
I decided to dump arch when I was working in a foreign country for a month, had bad internet, and had to weigh whether -Syu or -S would be more likely to break my system. Shit’s way too stressful.
What the fuck do you do to have this happen?
Run
pacman -Syu, reboot, and it fails to boot. Had it happen many times with arch and derivatives on multiple devices. It’s far more likely to happen if you don’t update for like a month.Not updating in a month?! What kind of arch user is that?
A dumb one using Arch on a backup media device. At least that one dodged the bad grub release.
I’ve had it also happen on the main device that was updated multiple times a week.
First off, run
Syyu, the old arch gods demand itAlso have a copy of pacman-static somewhere so that you can fix your shit in case of a partial upgrade (and trust me, it can go horribly wrong)
And thirdly, Arch is meant as a power user distro – despite this abhorrent popularity it has gained, the fact of the matter remains that you need to know the system inside and out, if you make your arch system unable to boot… Don’t use arch
This is not my attempt at elitism. Arch was never meant to be a hassle free distro and it sure as shit is not one.
There are many maintenance-free distros you can use instead. Can I offer you a Debian in these trying times?
Also have a copy of pacman-static somewhere so that you can fix your shit in case of a partial upgrade (and trust me, it can go horribly wrong)
Oh I know, I quickly learned to never update it without having live media nearby to arch-chroot with.
if you make your arch system unable to boot… Don’t use arch
The only thing I did to make it unbootable is to update it. Going by that logic nobody should use it.
This is not my attempt at elitism. Arch was never meant to be a hassle free distro and it sure as shit is not one.
I definitely agree, that’s why I’m commenting against dumbasses suggesting it to beginners. Especially when they glorify AUR.
Can I offer you a Debian in these trying times?
No need, I already landed on MX + nix after 2+ years of arch. Nix unstable gives me all of the benefits of arch (except for the DE) and then plenty more on top. Different downsides, but far less stressful. I’m
You need to keep the update log and go through the whole thing and see if something needs reconfiguring. Sounds shitty? Yeah, that’s why I stopped using Arch and Gentoo despite being a veteran
Nowadays I just install Debian or some derivative and call it a damn day. Unless you need some exotic setup (and those are more suited to Gentoo or Slackware anyway)
Fedora 40 + dnf5. QED.
Always gonna downvote fascist memes.
